Extortion and environmentalism

Friday

May 23, 2008 at 7:16 AMMay 23, 2008 at 7:17 AM

Steve Williams-Opinion Page Editor

The Bureau of Land Management's California branch manages 15.2 million acres of public lands in the state, which works out to some 15 percent of California's total surface area. But for environmentalist activists, that's not enough.

So it uses environmental protection pretexts to extort even more private land and place it off limits to the general populace.

A case in point is what's going on with offshore drilling in California, particularly areas directly west of Santa Barbara. There, a Houston oil company, Plains Exploration & Production Co., has agreed  in exchange for the right to slant drill from one of its four offshore platforms to tap into an undersea oil field  to donate 200 acres of oceanview property along the Gaviota coast, and an additional 3,700 acres it owns in Santa Barbara's wine-growing region. Both the oceanview and wine-country acreage would be used for public parkland.

Since 1969, when an oil spill off Santa Barbara helped launch the modern environmental movement in California, environmental groups have fiercely  and almost always successfully  opposed any development of offshore oil deposits along the California coast, including using protracted litigation, congressional moratoriums and bureaucratic delays. But PXP, lured by the skyrocketing price of oil, made the offer of the land  plus donating millions of dollars to fund projects aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, including low-emission public buses.

The extortion  which is basically what this is  has apparently worked. A lawyer for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center has said the Center supports the "deal". The inescapable conclusion, of course, is that if the money  or the land  is right, environmental groups are more than willing to look the other way.

And who will ultimately pay for the environmentalists' extortionate ways? You. In higher gasoline prices.

And then there's this example, much closer to home.

Back in April, Arnold Schwarzenegger ended a speech on California's role in fighting climate change by singling out the Mojave Ground Squirrel's role in delaying construction of the new power plant on 388 acres at Southern California International Airport (formerly George Air Force Base). The plant will include a solar facility which will generate about 50 megawatts of the plant's eventual 700-megawatt capacity.

But the solar part is to be built on land where rumors exist that once upon a time Mojave ground squirrels were seen in the area, and because of that the California Department of Fish and Game has slowed the approval process. That drew Schwarzenegger's ire, and he said so. The delay, Schwarzenegger said, is "because of an endangered squirrel, an endangered squirrel which has never been seen on that land where they're supposed to build the solar plants. But if such a squirrel were around, this is the kind of area that it would like, they say."

Final approval will no doubt eventually be given, but not without a little more environmentalist extortion. Victorville has agreed to "set aside" about three acres for every acre used up by the plant, for a total of 1,315.5 acres, some of which might have to be acquired through eminent domain, i.e., the city will pay off any property owners who lose their land to protect Mojave ground squirrel habitat. So taxpayers are going to fund one more bit of environmental extortion. And never mind what it's costing to delay the project because of the imagined existence of a ground squirrel.